Talk:New Student Orientation
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If anybody has any questions about UIUC, Housing, GSLIS, Urbana Champaign, administrative concerns, etc., please feel free to post them here. Or, feel free to email Ingbert Floyd at ifloyd2@uiuc.edu if you have any questions. I'll be happy to answer them as best I can, and will put up the information on this page.
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[edit] Questions
[edit] JENNY RANT
So, spurred on by Dubin_facets, which I like a lot, I am faced with the repeated problem whenever these facet/grouping things happen at GSLIS. None of the facets apply in ANY WAY to someone who comes to GSLIS going "uh, I want to work at a public reference library" or "Hey, I would love to be an archivist!" The phrase "Information Organization and Access" is gibberish to your average GSLIS student before 501, and negatively charged after. While I understand from the research point of view these facets are really helpful and define what field(s) you do research in, they do nothing for us practicioners. And while I totally agree with the Morlock Fallacy idea, it's hard to say that when "tech" classes are not defined as "applicable to people who want to work in a library next year" vs. "people who want to be in a doctoral program next year." I realize you theory people(TM) want us to know some theory too, but you don't understand how frustrating it is to spend 1/8 of your degree in a class that won't do anything practical for you to get a job.
But perhaps that means Benevento_Facets will have to be created. Meh.
[edit] Dave responds
Strange as it may seem, both the four curriculum areas (a faculty collaboration) and the other nine facets I chose have nothing to do with theory or research. They're all intended to speak to masters student career planning problems. You just may not think we did a good job of it.
Mapping course titles to job titles (facet II) is not a tidy process. So the idea was to identify distinct, independent dimensions that let students choose some areas for specialization, and some others for survey. So a student could specialize in serving children and young adults (a facet IV community), and then make sure he got enough diversity in the resource genres (V) and media (VI) that will be relevant to children and young adults. Or a student could specialize in digital documents (a facet VI medium) and her adviser would steer her towards as many different stages of the information life cycle (facet III), communities (IV) and disciplines (VII) as possible within the constraints of the program requirements.
The first facet (curriculum area) can't be specialized on for precisely the reason Jen identified: that facet doesn't speak to particular career paths, but to broader issues. That one is about answering the questions, "What do LIS people care about?" and "What kinds of things should all LIS people be good at?"
The idea was to recommend that every student take some kind of community class, some kind of managey class, some kind of catalogy class, and some kind of systemy/servicey class (God, I sound like Stephen). Because no matter whether you're an archivist or a reference librarian you're going to cope with those four aspects of professional life in some form in any typical work week. Not everyone has to take cataloging. But it would be a mistake not to take at least some class that has you analyzing and describing resources formally (e.g., cataloging, indexing & abstracting, IR, Document Modeling, et al). Same idea with the other three curriculum areas.
As for the Morlock fallacy, that advice was motivated by no academic vs professional distinction either. It's a purely practical response to the rapid pace of technological change. The idea is to equip you to cope when every five years the technology looks totally different. So I recommend that while you have the chance you learn something about the aspects of IT that remain relatively stable.
You don't have to agree that I'm giving good advice, but don't make me out to be pushing some kind of wooly-headed abstraction. These are nitty-gritty abstractions.
Dave
[edit] Jenny responds
OOh! I don't think you are giving bad advice, or that you are wooly headed! I enjoy things that are multi-faceted. The more faceted the better, Dave (look, I've been indoctrinated by Pauline!)! I am just saying that there is a REAL need for another type of grouping, one that allows someone who has never worked in a library/doesn't know anything about IS to make the most efficient/relevant path to a practical career in one year/8 credits. That's honestly what GSLIS is sold as, and whether we agree about that or not, hundreds of people turn up on the doorstep each semester being told that in a year they will get a job in LIS. If that's the stated goal, then I think we should show them more specifically how to do that most effectively, don't you? Instead many of us bumble around picking classes randomly on what looks interesting, not knowing if it will provide us with marketable skills/knowledge.
I guess I am saying that if you want to work a reference desk, then you probably know that you don't want to focus on "the life of digital documents," but maybe if it was made clear which one of the courses in that area would help you deal with electronic resources or digitizing rare books, than you would take that class and be better prepared. Many of the phrases used in the description of these areas make little to no sense to me/us. I still have no idea what the "information life cycle" is and it wasn't until well after I took 501 that I understood what "information organization and access" meant practically. Granting that I am not an idiot, that seems like a real pedagogical problem, no?
I agree students should take a little of all those things, but since we have so few credits and so little time in the program, it would be good to know the OPTIMUM of each genre to take a class in. IE I am taking Special Library Administration because I know I should take an admin class and I want to work in a special library. Or say I want to be an archivist so I will take digital libraries and digital humanities. I am not asking for a huge shift in pedagogical theory here, but just a list of classes that might be helpful if you want to be an academic humanities librarian.
[edit] Related Links
Either click on the article tab at the top of this page or click here to return to the New Student Orientation page.
[edit] Other housing options
It looks like I'll be coming to Champaign in a rather short amount of time. The New Student Orientation points to some housing resources, but it would be nice to have something similar to the "bar" and "restaurant" guides elsewhere on the wiki. (I'm new to wikiworld and didn't see an obvious way to add a new category to resources.)
There seem to be off-campus housing options comparable to Graduate apartments, but being unfamiliar with Champaign-Urbana geography and neighborhoods it's time consuming to evaluate whether they're in an area anyone would want to live (pros, cons of xyz neighborhood, etc.). I've mostly been doing this by word of mouth, but I have the advantage of knowing people to ask. I'd be happy to share what I learn during this little adventure if there's a place to put it.
I've setup a Housing page and category (to create a category just type in [[Category:Category Name]]) with some very general information, but since I live at Orchard Downs and I have no plans to move, I do not know much about housing options in Urbana Champaign. Therefore it would be excellent if you wanted to contribute the results of your search to the Housing page, and perhaps create new pages for particular landlords, neighborhoods, or locations. Also, it would be great if someone who has more experience looking for housing in the area wants to contribute. Let me know if this is helpful, or if you need/want something different or better. -Ingbert
Thanks Ingbert! I'll add what I've turned up so far. -Richard
